Wisconsin’s Legislature doesn’t look the same after this election cycle, which took place under new district maps. This year, all 99 Assembly seats and half of the 33 state Senate seats were up for grabs.
The state Senate went from 22/33 GOP super majority to 18/33 seats majority. The state Assembly went from a 64/99 seats GOP majority to 54/99 seats majority. Rep. Travis Tranel, chair of the Assembly Agriculture Committee, secured his seat in the Nov. 5 election. But not all agriculture leadership will return to the state Capitol.
“We did lose some strong rural Wisconsin advocates, and that’s a tough pill to swallow,” Tranel says. He praised former Sen. Joan Ballweg who chaired the Senate Agriculture & Tourism Committee for her work in office.
While he was on the campaign trail, Tranel says a few topics came up more than others. The first is excitement around the $150 million Agricultural Road Improvement Program included in the last budget.
“Very soon, those projects will start to take form and take shape and people will see how big of a win that actually was for rural Wisconsin,” Tranel says. “I’m hoping we can continue to build upon that in the next session.”
Issues around land use was also a topic of conversation with constituents during the campaign season. Tranel says most rural residents are against large renewable energy projects developing in their backyards. He says in 2009, local control was taken away from residents regarding siting energy projects over 100 megawatts.
“That is something that I think we need to take a serous look at. People in rural Wisconsin do not want to look at thousand-acre solar farms, and they don’t want wind mills that are 600-feet tall out their front window. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
